Attachment and Parenting: Where Does It All Fit?

In this episode of the Learn Play Thrive podcast, we are joined by Megan Jones, a Clinical Psychologist with over 26 years of experience, to unpack the science behind building secure attachments.

Megan clarifies common misconceptions, explaining how research-driven attachment-based parenting is vastly different from permissive parenting. We explore the "control center" of the parent-child relationship, focusing on how co-regulation and emotion coaching allow parents to stay deeply connected with their children even during the most challenging tantrums and bedtime battles.

The discussion provides a practical roadmap for setting clear, age-appropriate limits without sacrificing warmth. Megan introduces evidence-based approaches like Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), illustrating how consistent boundaries actually help children feel safer and more understood.

This episode is a powerful reassurance for parents, reminding us that "perfect" isn't the goal... rather, it is the combination of attuned responsiveness and calm, predictable guidance that sets a child on a trajectory for long-term emotional security.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to Learn Play Thrive the podcast, the ultimate early learning podcast for educators and leaders in the sector. Let's learn, play, and thrive together.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

The Learn Play Thrive podcast was recorded on the land with the Dark and John people. We pay our respects to the traditional custodians, past, present, and emerging. Hands up, hands down, clear and dark and young.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Welcome back to Learn Play Thrive the podcast. Today we are diving deep into one of the most talked-about topics in parenting: how to build secure, lasting attachment while still setting clear, age-appropriate limits. I am absolutely delighted to introduce our guest who brings decades of rich evidence-based experience to this discussion. Meg Jones is a highly accomplished clinical psychologist with over 26 years of experience working nationally and internationally. She has extensive expertise across adult, adolescent, and child and family mental health, including specialized work in complex trauma, fostering, adoption, and working within prisons. Meg's true passion lies in supporting parents focusing on those critical parent-child relationships. She is a dedicated user of evidence-based therapies, drawing on a wide range of powerful approaches, including cognitive behavioural therapy, mentalization-based therapy, schematherapy, and most relevant to our conversation today, parent-child interaction therapy and attachment-based therapies. She believes in cultivating a safe, relaxed, and confidential environment to help families achieve their goals. With a clinical master of psychology from the University of New South Wales, Megan has the deep clinical foundation we need to unpack the science of attachment-based parenting today. Welcome, Megan, to Learn Play Thrive the Podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

Thank you, Smain.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Pleasure to be here. Very fortunate to have you on and for you to take the time to have this conversation with us today. It seems there's so much parenting advice out there, and attachment-based parenting has become very popular recently. Can you explain what attachment-based parenting really is from a research perspective and how it differs from what people think it is?

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Right, so attachment-based parenting isn't actually a thing per se. So there is no defined model that is called attachment-based parenting. Attachment is more about research, and so it's an area that has gone through extensive research that's shown and derived a set of principles that can be used to facilitate and direct what helpful parenting approaches might actually look like. So attachment's more of a descriptive framework which can help define how we approach parenting. It's not a set of rules that anybody needs to adhere to. So attachment research goes back many years. There's many researchers that actually inform the inform attachment, but two of the most influential and most significant, one was called John Bowlby, and the other one is Mary Ainsworth. So John Bowlby was the researcher that really coined what attachment was, and then Mary Ainsworth went on to develop some experiments which looked at something called the Strange Situations Task. And so she put hundreds of and thousands of children through an experiment where they would pop a parent and a child in a room, and then they would have a series of separations away from that parent with a stranger that came into the room during that time. And then they would code behaviour both during the separation and also what happened after the child was reunited with their parent. And then as this went on, they started to hook kids up to electrodes and work out what happened to their physiology, measure their heart rates and all those sorts of variables so they could see. And what came out of that is that there was a few predictable styles that children tended to respond with. So one could be a very what they call an anxious attachment. So children may become very overtly distressed. Even when parents came back in, they would find it really hard to settle. And then if they measured their physiology, what they would find is that kids stayed very active in their physiological responses even a long time after the parents had come back in and tried to settle them. And then there was an avoid an attachment pattern. Avoiding kids didn't really seem to care too much when their parents left or when they came back and didn't seem too bothered by it. But again, with physiology, when they measured the underlying physiology, they actually were incredibly stressed underneath it all, and they stayed quite stressed underneath it all. There was something called which they called disorganized attachment, and those kids were just all over the place. So they were either very distressed or very avoidant in their presentation, and it was really hard to predict. Again, physiology remained very high, regardless. And then the one that we all aim for, yeah, would be secure attachment. And secure attachment looks like the kid being distressed when that parent leaves, but also being able to soothe, be able to be soothed by their parent when they come back. And so the child actually settles when the parent comes back in and starts to do all the lovely things that we do as parents. And actually their physiological responses decrease quite rapidly. So the nervous system, the way that that's their nervous system just comes back down in response to that parent coming in. And so, based on this stuff, we actually developed a few core understandings about attachment and what can help build positive attachment between a parent and a child. But I think it's really important to recognise, and this is the bit that some people miss, is that it's a bi-directional process. So it's not just the parent that influences attachment, it's the child that influences attachment as well. And that's because you're dealing with variables like genetics and temperament and you know they slept. Have they slept? And is the sun and the moon's moon aligned in the right, right fashion, all these things that we find it really hard to predict as parents. So, but what they sort of found is that a set of evidence or principles that can help direct what would be most important to try and build a secure attachment. So the principle that they have found is most important to building a secure attachment is something they refer to as sensitivity. So sensitivity is actually a parent's capacity to notice the cues that the child is given off and being then able to interpret them accurately and then responding to those cues appropriately. So meeting their needs. Meeting their needs, but it's more than that, it's reading your child. And so when they're an infant, parents do this quite naturally and they call it a process of attunement. So your child might be crying and upset, and we often don't have a great idea about why they're upset. We learn to interpret whether it's a hungry cry or a I've got a wet nappy cry or something startled me cry. But attunement and sensitivity is about matching, looking at your baby, and actually we automatically match that baby's face, facial expressions, but we often use low, slow tones. So in response to their emotional storm and whatever they're distressed about, we're saying to them, I see you, I see what you're experiencing, and I'm reflecting that back to you on my face, but I'm going to be low and slow and calm, so you can be too. And it's in those moments of sensitive responding that actually builds what we call secure, is one of the building blocks of secure attachment. And so part of that is also responsiveness, yeah, and so being responsive to your child's needs, like you said earlier. But responsiveness isn't just about being physically present, it's also being emotionally available. And if you as a parent are really stressed out or having your own set of difficulties, or even if you've had your own traumas and difficult experiences in childhood, sometimes emotional availability is really hard to achieve. And I think it even when everything's perfect in the background and you've had a beautiful child and everything's lovely and wonderful, that it can be really difficult to achieve your own sense of calm in these moments with your children. Because I don't know about you, Simone, but having children and being a parent is perhaps one of the hardest things that I've ever had to do. And staying calm in the face of all the stress that comes with parenting, I think that's a really difficult thing to do. But as much as possible, you want to be responsive, and responsivity is uh involves a certain degree of being able to keep yourself very emotionally available. Yeah. What it doesn't mean is giving in to your children's emotional storm or backing down from putting in place boundaries and helping them regulate in that fashion as well.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

Because that can be the tricky part. The days usually full of challenges and tantrums and bedtime battles or children pushing boundaries. What are some effective behavioural guidance strategies that parents can use to stay connected with their children whilst setting the age appropriate limits?

SPEAKER_02 8:36

Right. So there's a couple of there's a bunch of really helpful parenting programs out there. Yeah. And if you feel like you're amiss and don't know what to do, then I would definitely, the first one I would go to is something called tuning into kids, or there's a there's an adolescent version called Tuning into Teens. You can access through a number of non-government organizations which actually run this. Lots of people do it one-to-one and have obviously trained in it, but you can also access it online now. So, and it was a programme that was developed by the University of Melbourne in response to something called emotion coaching parenting. And so I would advocate that every step of the way.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

Because it is really tricky as a parent to know when to pick your battles to go. Am I setting a boundary now or do I need to step in and follow attunement?

SPEAKER_02 9:20

So, my my first line of response is emotion coaching, if you don't know, yeah, but what we using emotion coaching when they've got an emotional storm happening is always going to be okay. Yeah, and what's really important is that we approach we respond to the emotion, not necessarily the behaviour that's on the surface. And responding to the emotion is always going to be a positive thing, but responding to the behavior is a completely different story. I think how we have to break it down is also think of it: is this an emotional meltdown that my child's having? Is it because they're tired, they're overwhelmed, they've had a bad day at school, someone's taken their toy and it was really meaningful to them and it was a big deal for them, even though it might seem like a small thing for us. Is there a big overwhelm that's going on? And every day of the week I'll say respond to that with emotion coaching. If it's a matter of defiance and you're in a power battle with a child, I would advocate that you handle that a very different way. Yeah, but either way, emotion coaching can get to that point if you're in doubt. So emotion coaching is just a series of steps that guides you through what would match very much with what would be attachment-based research. So the first one is noticing what your child's doing and where they're at in life, and then responding to the emotional state. So putting a label on their emotion, which actually can help calm their brain down because it's activating the frontal lobe and it's helping the frontal lobes talk to the emotional center of the brain, which is often doesn't care about a lot of what else is going on, it just responds to threat. So putting a label on it actually does quite a lot. And then listening to what your child has to say and just quietly and calmly reflecting back what they're saying to you, yeah, and responding to the emotional tone, sitting with their feelings but keeping your own calm, yeah, and allowing them to talk about it, not trying to fix it, not trying to redirect them away from their emotions, yeah, just sitting with it and letting them have their moment. And then once you've gone through that, you can validate that. You can say, Yeah, buddy, that's real hard. Like I can imagine if there was something really important to me and someone took it, that I'll be a bit upset too. Yeah, that would bother me. That doesn't excuse behaviour. And so the last step of emotion coaching, which might happen way down the line, would be problem solving. Problem solving might look like, do you need a cuddle? Problem solving might look like, do we need to put in a boundary here around behaviour? Problem solving might look like what do we need to do tomorrow to fix this? Does do you need mummy's help? Does mummy need to talk to someone? Do you need to say sorry? You know, how do we fix this and how do we move forward? So that sort of process with emotion coaching parenting is always going to be helpful. So attachment is different from just parenting per se. Attachment is just a bi-directional process that can inform what's going to be helpful in order for a child to be able to develop well their social and emotional competence, their cognitive ability, and their behavioral regulation. So it's a good practice, but it's not a parenting model. So emotion coach parenting actually gives you more of that structure to be able to know how to respond. But like I said, if there's limit setting that needs to be done, it's actually really important to do. And part of attachment, yeah, is about setting consistent and calm limits. And that has been shown within a research field to actually help children feel less anxious.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

So there is no that they can go to someone that's going to give them clear understanding and feedback as to what they're going through. Like, oh, I've noticed this, this is what I'm thinking. What do you think?

SPEAKER_02 12:44

So it's yeah, so it's reflecting back what they're experiencing and helping them make good decisions for themselves, and that's useful right from the get-go, right from as young as you can do it.

SPEAKER_01 12:52

I know when children are little, particularly like under two, three age group, everything that we say eventually gets internalized, and then as they're older, adolescence, it starts to become their voice in their head as to do I do this or do I not do this?

SPEAKER_02 13:08

Yeah, absolutely. And so there's layers of research around aside from attachment, yeah, there's layers of research around things that we call our internal working model. And so the internal working model of any individual is often very much based in our experiences of being parented. Attachment is part of that, but there's lots of other things that then feed into that process. But attachment principles are meant to be able to provide a safe haven. So kids are meant to go out and explore the world, and they're meant to have a certain amount of autonomy, and we want them to have autonomy. Yeah, but they want to be able to come back and know that there's a safe base to be able to come back to. Now, sometimes that looks like that wasn't okay, and you can't behave like that, and but doing it in a calm and consistent fashion. So, and that can be really hard for parents to know where to get that right, and I think that's where people struggle. That the the supporting their children's emotions, there's a lot of information there in the media, and but actually responding to difficult behaviour, I think that's where people can get confused. So, and sometimes parents can go down a path of very permissive parenting, which is where all emotions are okay, and the child's emotions basically direct everything and direct everyone. And that doesn't necessarily build a secure attachment, and nor does it build a child's sense of regulation, because kids don't know how to regulate all on their own. They're learning that. That's a process which they can learn through a process of attunement and attachment with their parent and other people for that matter, not just their parent. Yeah. So early educators, for instance, can become really formative attachment figures, even in the absence of children having a good parenting experience. So, for instance, children that have been removed from parental care and placed in foster care or in other places so they can be safe. So other people, educators, for instance, can become really important attachment models for a child. And I don't want anybody to underestimate the importance of that because I have seen educators in particular, because they have such frequent contact with children on a day-to-day basis, become such an important part of children's life.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

I think just society at the moment, some families work so much that some children are in our care for five days a week. So we utilize the key educator model, which is kind of like the primary carer analogy of way to do that when in in our space, but it allows for an educator to be naturally accepted by the child, and that's how we work out who goes with who, and then obviously the different expertise of the educators will be partnered up with particular children, but it allows for that person to be potentially that secure.

SPEAKER_02 15:50

Absolutely, and I think that's really crucial. And I get a lot of parents coming in to see me clinically, and they will say they're really attached to one particular educator, and I'll be like, Well, that's not a bad thing. Yeah. We want to be able to expand that out so they can develop that security and attachment with other people and the bond that they have with them so they can start to feel safe within the context of other people. But it's not a bad thing that they've been able to develop a very secure attachment with at least one person.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Sometimes that the conversation needs to be on the other side with the educator to have that conversation. Correct. Yeah, I know that we love this connection, but we also need to, for the child's well-being, ensure that child also develops other secure attachments in their environments. Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:31

And so that's that secure base bit where we send kids out, we want them to go out as well and develop autonomy and just be there as a base that they can come bear back to check in with so we can send them out again. And it's really interesting. If you sit and think about if anyone has children, you would have taken them to a park and/or you might have watched other children in a play situation in a park. They will often wander off and they will drift off and they will go and play with other people, or they'll go down the slide, and then they naturally run back to you and they come and touch base, and then they'll smile and look at you, and you nod, and you're like, Yeah, buddy, it's okay, go have some more fun, and then send them out. And that is attachment, yeah. That attachment circle, the going out and the coming back in in practice, and it's really beautiful to watch. And we want that. And hopefully, as children get older, we want them to go further, but still want them to come back in. And so I also get people coming in about teenagers, and teenager is a whole different ball game. I mean, that's just I'm about to step into it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm in it at the moment, and it's definitely not fun or easy at times, but we want our children to be able to come back to us with problems. We can't stop them getting into difficult situations, but when they are in a difficult situation, we want them to come back in and say, I need help. Yeah. Yeah. And so I often talk about when you get to that sort of level is that you go from being the manager of a child when they're like you do when you that you are when you're little, and then you go to being the consultant, and you've got to get re-employed as the consultant. And so doing emotion coaching parenting and using those skills is actually what facilitates you being re-employed as the coach. So it's important to start at very young. Yeah. Yeah. And and look, I also want to give out another fact, yeah, which is that the research shows that we have to get it right about 40% of the time. So there is nothing about perfection that we need. All right. We do not need to be perfect as parents. And there is so much misinformation and so much guidance out there that I think people parents have become really overwhelmed with what they should and shouldn't be doing. And I think that makes the job so much harder. 40% of the time we need to be getting it right. Yeah. And so that leaves lots of room for imperfection. And one of the other beautiful things about attachment research that we know is that there is always going to be what we call miscueing, yeah, which is that we're going to give off the wrong vibe. When that child comes back into us, we might look a little bit anxious because we've got something going on and they start to interpret that as something's not okay and it's not safe to go back out. Now, we often make those miscues. Kids also miscue us as parents, right? And so it's bi-directional in nature. But what we know is that sometimes there is ruptures in relationship, and it's actually really healthy and it's really okay to have those ruptures in a relationship. But what's really important and what they've shown is that not to not have ruptures, but to actually have the repair that comes with the rupture. So after a rupture has happened, to be able to come back together and then soothe that relationship and get it back onto a nice ground, if you like. Now that doesn't mean not putting in place boundaries. It means that sometimes you need to put in place very firm boundaries, very consistent and calm boundaries, yeah. But it's nice to come back and say, I still love you, right? We don't have to talk about the behavior after it happens, we don't have to analyze it to the nth degree, that's not necessarily going to be helpful. Kids know what they've done wrong most of the time. Yeah. Putting in place a boundary teaches them that what they've done isn't okay. Yeah, but what's important is that we also communicate to you is that's done, yeah, and now we can move on. I still love you, you're still safe, you can still come to me with problems, and we can keep going.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

How much amount of time is appropriate for you to address a behaviour? For instance, if you are at a park with a young child and you notice some behaviours going on and you go into the coaching mode and then you decide, okay, it's time for us to go. How much time is an okay time to potentially then have that conversation with that child? So it depends on age.

SPEAKER_02 20:12

I was gonna say it depends on heaps of factors, and it's how long is a piece of string, right? And there's lots of factors and variables in the situation. I'm not sure that there is any right or wrong. In general, when you're dealing with difficult behaviours, yeah, it's better to be immediate with your consequences so they can make a helpful connection. And when kids are younger, obviously their memory networks are very different to what they are as an adult. So immediacy and consistency is really important in shaping behaviour to difficult behaviours.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

And young children, like younger children, for instance, in that two-year-old, three-year-old age group, they don't have the understanding of attention being positive or negative. So there are some things that can happen. Children are just testing out to be like, what happens if I do it?

SPEAKER_02 20:54

Absolutely. It's kids, part of their going out and exploring the world is finding out where the pointy edges are. Yeah, and sometimes they might whack another kid, yeah, because that's part of them developing a social understanding of how other people are going to respond. And that's really common. I mean, I'm sure that as someone that runs daycare centres, you will have seen a bunch of kids that might have bitten other kids or will be taking other kids things away from people.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

Are there enough resources? Was there only one truck in the sandpit rather than two trucks in the sandpit? What happened here?

SPEAKER_02 21:26

Right. And so sometimes you can only get to things where you can get to things, and it's facilitating the understanding. But what is important is about that sensitivity and the responsivity. So if a child is very upset, yeah, then you're going to not necessarily excuse their behavior, but particularly when they're young, you might take the space to say, I I can see that you're really upset and that you're angry that person took your truck and that truck was really important to you. And they might turn around and say, It was my truck, it was really important, and you're gonna just reflect those words. It was your truck, yeah, you were playing with it. And it was really important to you. And that's not condoning the behavior that came up to that came after it, which was to whack the other kid in the head, right? That is just that you're spending some time sitting with their pain. And what we know is that even adults respond to this approach. So I and I use the example with parents all the time. If your partner comes up to you or a good friend and you're really upset or frustrated or angry about something, and someone says to you, just calm down. Never works. Yeah? Never works. The first thing you want to do is strangle them just a little bit because it's like if I could be calm, I would be calm. And kids are the same. If they could be calm, they would be calm. Yeah, they don't necessarily want to not be calm. So we're not a good feeling. It's not a good feeling. Nobody really loves it. So but what we need is someone to step in and do that co-regulation. And co-regulation is literally sitting in that emotion with them. Yeah, not necessarily fixing it, but just sitting with it. And once you've sat with it, and once someone says or knows in their mind they get it, they understand where I'm at, then they're much more willing to listen to the next bit, which is okay, this is what we need to do in order to be able to calm down, or this is the limit that we need to put in place. Actually, it's not okay to whack people in the head.

SPEAKER_01 23:11

Yeah. What can we do instead? Maybe you can say, I'll ask Miss Sim to get another truck for you.

SPEAKER_02 23:16

Yeah, yeah. How can we fix this next time? Yeah. So I can have it. Yeah, we can take turns, we can share. And then you sit there and role play a little bit of sharing and you put those sorts of skill training role modelling. Role modelling sort of opportunities into play. So they can learn those skills because they don't have them. We're not necessarily born with that stuff. It develops across trying across time with a little bit of trial and error. It's a hard gig, whether you're a parent or an educator.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

It is. What so parenting can be really hard and it's easy to feel overwhelmed or doubt yourself. What would you say to reassure parents or educators?

SPEAKER_02 23:53

I would say is that it's okay to get it wrong. Yeah. Remember the 40% of the time. It's also really important to remember that it's okay to put in place boundaries. I think, like I said earlier, one of the things that parents often struggle with is knowing how to put in place boundaries and watching their children be upset in response to you putting in boundaries. And actually, it's okay for them to be upset. They don't have to like that you're putting in place a boundary, but it is really important. It's important to developing attachment security, it's important to them to develop an understanding of relationships, and it's important to developing their own capacity for regulation. Whether you're an educator or whether you're a parent, and there might be some differences in how you're going to go about putting in place those limits and boundaries, but nonetheless, it's important to know that it is part of developing secure attachment and part of being or engaging in good parenting is to put in place those limits consistently and with calmness. So one of the most important things I can say to people is that, and one of the things that is often one of the most challenging things as a parent is staying calm in the face of this stuff. And I've not necessarily done it well all the time. Sometimes I lose my mind and I yell at my kids and I feel appropriately guiltyly guilty afterwards. And then I actually go back to my children who are now a little bit older and I apologize and I say, I'm sorry I didn't do that well. Yeah, I shouldn't have yelled at you, and that wasn't okay for me to do that, and that wouldn't have felt good. And I take accountability and responsibility for that bit, and that's the repair bit that I do when I've caused a rupture in the relationship. Yeah, but even me putting in limits, that's not excusing the fact that I've still had to put in place a limit. I might not have done it smoothly, but the limit was okay. Yeah to say, okay, well, we're gonna put that toy on timeout for 20 minutes. Yeah, or you're not gonna be allowed to use your iPad for the next hour. Or you need to go and maybe we need to say sorry to that person, yeah. Or how about we practice sharing and you say to the other kid, would you like a turn? Yeah, and we need to do all of those things. And it's okay to put in place those limits. In fact, it's necessary.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

There is a little bit of a debate in our sector as to whether or not it is appropriate for young children age five and younger to apologize because there's a debate that the brain's not at the capacity or ability level for their understanding to know what that means and to know the intention behind it, or actually mean it. But then the other side of the debate is you're teaching children respect and what to do in these circumstances when things come up, and it's more about I guess when you're using manners and politeness. Yes. Where do you sit with that? Do we encourage children to go? Oh, so-and-so is a bit upset because you've hit them on the head with the truck. So our thoughts are to go and comfort that child so that the other child that has done the in what whatever it may be has hit the child, can see you comforting that child, and the explanation that you provide the person that has done the action is, I can you see they're really upset.

SPEAKER_02 26:54

Again, I don't think there's necessarily one right answer here, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:58

Because very young children, you can see it's been and done, and they don't really think about it that much.

SPEAKER_02 27:02

Absolutely, and lots of kids will move on, and it's more about them having an understanding of the impact of their behaviour. I don't think the apology is necessary, yeah, and I don't think it's anything you need to force on a child. Yeah, so there there is lots of kids that will stay holding on to that anger and they accept that you've put in place a limit, and they accept that they might have even done something wrong, but they're not quite ready to hand over the olive branch and apologize for it. And that's okay. We don't have to force those scenarios, and I don't think it's necessary. I think it's often important to teach a child to acknowledge the impact that they've had on another, and I think that's the more important bit. Sometimes that can look like an apology, yeah. But I've often seen seen the experience of often children will just say sorry and they think that's it, right? And that actually it stops being about modifying their behaviour and and changing their behaviour to do something different or behave in a different fashion, yeah, or to learn from that experience, and they think that apology can just make it all better. And that's not the right motivation either. Yeah. So I think about I think about the child, I think about the age appropriateness of it, and I think about whether they their understanding of empathy is embodied in an apology if you're going to if they're going to say sorry to another child. I don't think it's an essential component, particularly in in younger children.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

Well, sometimes younger children can't get the words out, so they can't articulate I didn't mean to run into them and bump heads. And it's like, well, you can say that if you like. You can say that I'm sorry that you're hurt. I didn't mean to do that.

SPEAKER_02 28:35

And that was is what I would call a good apology. Yeah. It's it's taking accountability for something that's happened that and often the intention and communicating intention, often the intention is not bad. One of my biggest, and I often tell people of all ages that trying to understand the intention behind another's actions is a crucial importance to actually having empathy. Yeah. Sometimes we get angry and we yell at someone else. Our intention is to communicate to them, to understand our passion and how hurt we are feeling, but it comes out all wrong. Yeah, and it's not meant to be mean, but that's how it comes across. And so often it's about communicating our intention, but then learning from that and trying to communicate our intention in another way. Yeah. And again, that's a bi-directional process. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes we don't always get the opportunity to be able to communicate our intention in a helpful way because the other person has reacted to tone or and that happens with parents as well and educators. Sometimes we miscue and misunderstand the way that someone is responding. And as a parent, it's one of the hardest things in the world to step back and not be frustrated by your child's behaviour. And to be able to step, it's an art form, in my opinion, to be able to step back and say, all right, what's just happened here? He's just whacked another kid in the in the face. And I could just go in here and just yell at him and make them or her, as it may be, and make them apologize for their behaviour. But what's actually going to be more helpful? Why has this happened? How can I guide my children through this situation so they have a better understanding? Learning opportunity. Right? And so, which is where those emotion coaching steps come into play. And it doesn't mean that you won't put in place a boundary or a limit, and it doesn't mean that you won't say, I think we need to go up and help that child understand what went on from our perspective, but also to explain to them that maybe we should have done it differently.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

Yeah. And I think sometimes, particularly if we're putting the parent-child scenario in place, if you're at a park with a another parent and their child and there's an altercation between the children, sometimes it's like your own stuff of no, they're going to think this of me and my child rather than what has actually occurred.

SPEAKER_02 30:37

And parenting in the in the age. Oh, you've got to catch it. And in the age of social media where there is so much stuff out there about how we should be doing things or shouldn't be doing things, or and there's there's even, I think, a level of competition in parenting these days. And even I have fallen prey to this many a time. Having a birthday for party for your kids, and I'm not sure that they really care about the birthday party, but we want it to look really good and really special for them. Yeah, but that's our stuff, it's not the kids' stuff. The kids just want to run away around and play with their friends, yeah, and and be free.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

I was told at my son's last birthday party, he said, I don't want you doing anything. Don't no games, nothing. It's like, what about pass it? No, don't. So I just had to say, and I tell you what, it was the easiest birthday party I've ever hosted.

SPEAKER_02 31:25

I know, and often we're doing that to try and look to feel competent ourselves. Yeah. I don't think it's about looking good, but we want to feel competent. We want to- You feel like you need to entertain. Right. They're all friends. We feel like we need to fix, we feel like we need to entertain. We feel like we need everything to go well, we feel like we need to look like everyone's being catered for, and I think we feel like we need to look like we're competent and we're together. And there is not enough vulnerability and freedom for vulnerability today these days in the face of parenting. I think there's a lot of judgment from all angles. There always has been, but I think that social media has just made it that much more difficult for people.

SPEAKER_01 32:01

So there is one parenting strategy that I used when my children were a little bit younger, like preschool age. There was the time width. So what that looked like is you find 10 minutes out of the day to be with your child, no phone, nothing. Yep. And you follow their play. So it can't be technology or anything like that, but it can be just dinosaurs or what have you, and you try to just follow their lead. So one of my other Which can be really tricky.

SPEAKER_02 32:27

Which can be really tricky. And so I actually do something called parent-child interaction therapy. And so parent-child interaction therapy, in my opinion, has been one of the most useful things that I've ever been trained in. And it's given me such a lot of useful tools. But there's two parts to it. The first part of that program is actually a play-based therapy where we train parents to sit down and literally play with their children in a particular fashion. And it's not complicated, but it's much harder in practice. And essentially, the guiding principle of that first part of that program is to be child-led, so we follow our child. And we've got a number of skills that map onto attachment-based principles, yeah, about being sensitive and responsive. That is important. We know that the second part of the program, which is about setting very consistent limits, yeah, is more effective in the face of doing the first part of the program. Yeah, it can often feel like you're not doing much, but it's incredibly valuable.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

Well, the aspect of having the 10-minute time limit is also showing that the child that you have boundaries. So you say we've got time for setting boundaries. So you know you've got time for 10 minutes now. So you set that boundary. I've got 10 minutes to have time with you to play. Absolutely. But after that 10 minutes, I need to go and do this. And at that 10 minutes, you say, Okay, unfortunately, our time's up. I've had a lot of fun, but I need to go. And if they try and push it or what have you, you still set that boundary.

SPEAKER_02 33:49

Correct, yeah. And so when even when I'm doing uh PCIT with parents, my my request from parents is that they'll spend five minutes, not even ten minutes.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

Well, I think actually 10 minutes is really hard to find.

SPEAKER_02 33:59

It's yeah, I think five minutes is hard to find as a parent.

SPEAKER_01 34:02

Yes, it is. If families try to do this every day, it's actually very hard to find 10 minutes where you're not being distracted by other things just to follow your child's lead. And I think it's a real eye-opener to see the way that we are in in our busy lifestyles that 10 minutes is all it takes, but 10 minutes is actually really hard to find. It's really hard to find.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

And you know, five even now, right? I I run from work to home and cook dinner, and and then by the time I get to sit down, I'm exhausted. And then I to prioritize that five minutes is sometimes a real struggle, and that doesn't, that's not meant to sound awful. It's not that I'm not a committed parent or I don't love my children, it's just that sometimes as parents, we're exhausted, yeah, and we need downtime too. But five minutes, if you can give five minutes five days a week, even, yeah, and spend that time consistently and make it part of your routine, schedule it in if it makes it easier for you, then that can be a really valuable input and it has really positive payoffs in the background as well. Does it is it still the same thing if it's part of the bedtime routine? Yeah, it can be anytime. I say to parents who are really time poor, do it in the bath. Yeah, chuck some toys in the bath and spend time doing it in the bath. So you can play with a kid for five minutes in a bath, and baths are almost helpful because there's a natural end point. The water gets cold and they have to get out. Yeah, so but that there can be some opposition and moving out, like you said, those setting those limits to those five minutes is about people, it is about kids understanding that actually the world, while they are super important in the universe, there is other things that parents have to do, and so setting those parents and moving out of that parenting, uh out of that play-based interaction is incredibly important as well. You can give user false choice command in those circumstances. So, and that might look like you can stay and play, or you can come and help me cut up the carrots for dinner. Yeah, right, or uh you can stay and play for another five minutes while I put your brother to bed, or you can sit and um read a book. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:59

So you know it's not like you only have five minutes with the child, they can still have other interactions with you as well. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's just set aside for child-led that's it.

SPEAKER_02 36:08

So this is just for this very child-led play. But one of the most useful, another useful thing that I've learned in years of random training is that there was uh a beautiful lady who practices something called Martimayo, and she's uh an early childhood uh specialist for want of a better word. And remember in her training, she turned around and she goes, My mother never came out and sat down and played with us for hours endlessly. We were sent out into the backyard and told to entertain ourselves. We were only allowed back inside for a sandwich at lunchtime, and then we'll sent back outside again. Having a good and positive interaction with your children isn't just about sitting down and having to play with them all the time. Yes, it is a nice thing to be able to do, and ideally, we want to do it for five minutes a day just to be able to be present and connected to them and in their space, and that's always going to help be a useful thing to build their confidence because when we give our time, we are saying to them we are important in a roundabout way. When we sit down with them, we have the opportunity to be able to praise, self-give little self-esteem praises. Wow, you're so creative. Oh my goodness, I love the colour that you chose to put on that drawing. And all of those things build that sense of confidence and competence. So it's a beautiful thing to do, but sitting down for hours isn't logistically possible in many people's lives, and it's certainly not necessary. So I always try to hold on to that. Yeah. So short amounts of time are often better than long amounts of time. It's nice to be able to do longer periods of time with our kids and to have beautiful family interactions, but on a day-to-day basis, small periods of time is where probably the joy is really at.

SPEAKER_01 37:44

Sometimes at the end of the day, it's you finish everything up and then you go find your child sitting on the couch and just snuggle in.

SPEAKER_02 37:49

Yeah, absolutely. And it particularly as children get older, sometimes those playthings become harder, and sometimes it's about finding something you can watch together. And or I often find laying down with my kids for five minutes just at bedtime, yeah, is when they're gonna partly because they're avoiding going to bed, but in part. But you know, that but that's beautiful, that's part of them trying to maintain that that positive connection with you. And often kids want connection, not attention. It's not really about attention, it's about the connectedness. But that is often the time when they'll sit there and start to tell you things that have happened, and you can just do that emotion coaching stuff. It's pretty simple. You don't need to fix anything. In fact, you can put off the fix or the problem-solving element until the next day, but it's nice to be able to have that time, and so you're available.

SPEAKER_01 38:33

A good friend of mine, I was walking with her and I was telling her about something that was happening in my child's life and how I responded. And I think I had like a lot of problem-solving techniques, and she simply said to me, Sometimes they just need someone to listen. Well, yeah, that's so true.

SPEAKER_02 38:49

Most of the time that's what we all need. Yeah. And that's that whole bit is where the beauty of emotion coaching is it's actually you just reflect what they're saying. You do not need to give advice, you do not need to fix how they're feeling. You do not necessarily need to come up with the answer for them. What they need is for someone to sit and listen and be able to sit in the feelings for them to calm down enough on the inside to be able to start to think those things through for themselves. Now, obviously, the younger the child is, the more difficulty, the more scaffolding they're going to need to be able to help thinking through those things. But often it's just a matter of helping a child regulate and come to their own peace with that situation that is actually the fix. Yeah, it's not about giving advice or trying to calm them down or trying to do anything in particular to fix that moment. People are allowed to feel what they want to feel, and if they're upset, if they're angry, there's usually a good reason for it. And as long as we're not violating other people's boundaries like hitting or hurting or yelling or screaming or saying mean things, then actually be able to provide your child with a space to feel angry or to feel sad or to feel hurt or disappointed or whatever those feelings might be is actually a really beautiful learning opportunity. That's where learning regulation happens in those exact moments.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

At the end of our podcast, we have three takeaway messages: one theory-based, one practical, and one inspiring. What would be your theory-based takeaway for us today?

SPEAKER_02 40:09

So, attachment is not a parenting practice per se, it's a research. It's research that informs parenting practice and it involves lots of different components, not just having a positive connection with your child, allowing them to go out to explore, allowing them to safely come back in. And that sometimes means that you're going to be able to be warm, that you're going to be sensitive and responsive, but also that you're going to set appropriate limits and boundaries when you need to in a calm way. And practical. It's always the emotion coaching. When in doubt, emotion coach, yeah. Label that notice the opportunity, yeah, and label the emotion, reflect what they're saying, validate the emotion that's underneath it. You don't have to validate the behavior or agree with the behavior to validate the emotion, yeah, and then help them problem solve at the end of it.

SPEAKER_01 40:55

I think when children are heightened, particularly young children that are going through that tantrum stage, it seems to be really important to allow them to have the time to go through that. Absolutely. And just wait and be with them.

SPEAKER_02 41:05

Yeah, and absolutely when it's a little brain meltdown, yeah, and it's not necessarily in defiance or it's it's just I've had enough I'm at the limit. I'm tired, I'm hangry, I'm flipping the lid. Yeah, I've flipped my lid. Um Dan Siegel, if no, if people haven't heard about Dan Siegel, he's got some really beautiful ideas, and his uh parenting practice certainly uh maps onto things like emotion coaching.

SPEAKER_01 41:31

Just touch on that for a little for a second with the flip-the-lid scenario, just in case people haven't heard of it before. So basically that's the brain and when they have a meltdown.

SPEAKER_02 41:40

Yeah, so so so Dan Siegel uses what he refers to as the hand model of the brain. And so if you tuck your thumb in and wrap your fingers around your thumb, they he he describes this as what the brain looks like. So your thumb is what we call the child's limbic system. So that's a bit of the brain that really drives emotion. But there's not a lot of thinking that goes on in Domygda, it's about threat responsivity, right? So it's the bit that likes to keep you safe, it's the fight, it's the flight, it's the freeze. Let's protect ourselves. It's survival mode, right? And then the fingers that wrap around the top of that, that's like your frontal lobes, yeah. Your frontal lobes are the thinking, your primary processing and thinking part of the brain. Yeah. And and that part wraps around your emotional part and helps talk to the downstairs part of the brain, yeah, which is the limbic system. And if you think about it across a day, there can be a loosening of the wrapping of your frontal lobe around the downstairs part of the brain. So a child might not have a great night's sleep. That's their frontal lobes are a little less wrapped, and there's a little bit more movement away from being close to the limbic system, yeah. And then someone might take their toy at daycare, and then well, and they have to say goodbye to their parent. And then they're they were, you know, didn't get to choose first and sand on your socks. Sand in your socks. Something's too noisy. There's a million little things that might push that. And with each of those little things, your frontal lobe may unwrap a little bit more. So the time they get home and they're a bit hangry and they've had a day of it, and and parents have had a day of it as well, and your frontal lobes are slightly unwrapped, yeah. Then what happens is one small thing can tip you over the edge, and we call it flipping your lid, is where your frontal lobes essentially lose charge of your brain, and you'll you become very driven by your limbic responses. And that's a very natural process.

SPEAKER_01 43:34

So it's really hormones flooding the amygdala and it all happening and there are times that needs to happen to be able to finish that process so that the good hormones then jump in and start to regulate.

SPEAKER_02 43:46

I mean, if you look at this from an evolutionary standpoint, if something was trying to eat your legs off, yeah, you want to be able to run away really fast or fight it really fast or get to somewhere where you can pretend that you you don't eat you're very quiet and nobody's gonna see you. Right. So from a functional perspective, your brain is respondering to threat in a very hyp helpful way. But often this happens also in the context of my parent just took off my i took me my iPad away. And your brain has the same response to as if its legs were about to be eaten off, except for your legs aren't being eaten off, it's just an iPad being taken away. But nonetheless, the brain sees that as a bit of a threat because it's something that it's enjoying. So it's a really tricky balance. And sometimes we get really big meltdowns in the face of what's seemingly a really small thigs, and it can be a gradual progression through the day, or it can be just something that the brain's particularly invested in. Yeah. And unfortunately, media and device usage is a really trippy, tricky topic, and something that we're never, I don't think, going to be able to avoid in this day and age. But our brain responds to device usage and it becomes a little bit of a dopamine hit. And we've demonstrated this in research that brains respond to devices with dopamine, and the brain can really love that and then really not like it when we take those things away as a parent.

SPEAKER_01 45:01

Yeah, I think giving the warning and the idea of what is going to happen for the child will help in those scenarios. Definitely can be a benefit, yeah. Yeah. Sorry, I got ourselves off track. That's very practical.

SPEAKER_02 45:12

But I think all of that was very practical. Okay, so yes, so so yes, that practical stuff is go with emotion coaching first, it's never gonna help. But if you need to set limits, but I think the as a last point to inspire parents, it's a hard job, yeah, and there is far too much advice out there to follow and don't overwhelm yourself with it. And if you need support, by goodness, get it early. Yeah, it's much, much easier to help shift and change these things when a child is young as opposed to when they're seven or eight or nine, yeah, where things and patterns and learning has become very embedded. If you can get the support when they're between three and six or even younger, yeah, that is probably the most helpful time to do it.

SPEAKER_01 45:56

And the reason why it is because, as you said, the learning it becomes more solified when they're older because the neural pathways have already been cut. That's it. Yeah. And when they're younger, if you can get in and help change the different behaviours or the different responses to it. It's preventative. Set the neural pathways, build that muscle in their brain, and then you're going to be over overcome those barriers a lot easier when they're younger because their brain's building so much faster under five years old.

SPEAKER_02 46:22

That's it. And so we talk about early intervention, and I think that um there is a drive towards early intervention. I think sometimes managing behaviour in a early intervention from an early intervention perspective where you're being preventative is actually super important. And getting in early and targeting some of these things so it doesn't get worse is probably where the joy is really at, as opposed to waiting.

SPEAKER_01 46:45

You know your child best. Yep. If you're a parent educators, sometimes really know their children really well as well. So you know them, read their cues, do what you know that they need. Don't be influenced by, as you said, social media, but also social situations that you might feel you you need to are intimidated within, or I should act this certain way. Do what your child needs.

SPEAKER_02 47:07

And I should, as a final, well, as another final point, yeah, I should add that there is laser stuff which I haven't talked about. Yeah, and amongst all of this. There is real things like that, there is diagnoses out there, and some kids do have developmental challenges and will be have specific diagnosis. And that stuff is important to take into account because it's going to take a much it's going to take a more sensitive response to how you manage your child's behaviour.

SPEAKER_01 47:34

And when you're talking about barriers that might change or shift or be elected, absolutely. When you do reach out to someone like yourself, you're able to be that bird's eye view to go, actually, I can see that this is the trigger point. Correct. The parent may not have been able to see that or realise that was an issue for that child. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:52

But time and time again, like I think that I don't know, but maybe parents are a little bit surprised about how many questions I ask because they are the expert on their child. Like I ask lots of questions because really their understanding of the interaction and what's happening for their child in the moment is far better than what I could ever be able to determine, you know, within an hour. Within an hour, within a session. And so it's getting the understanding, and then also understanding their understanding of what's happening for their child is crucially important in me being able to support them to maybe shift some of that stuff as well. So sometimes parents see their children distressed and they just automatically get distressed themselves, and that's perfectly okay. There's nothing wrong with that. But actually, how we then manage that in the context of managing your child's behaviour to be productive to be forward. Correct, yeah, to manage their distress is something that's really important to take into account. So it's on life quality.

SPEAKER_01 48:45

Well, thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate your time and expertise. Thank you for being the conversation. And yeah, uh look forward to sharing this with our listeners. Alright. Thanks, Sim. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Learn Playthrive the podcast. We hope you found inspiration and valuable insights to fuel your journey in early childhood education. Remember the key to fostering learning, promoting play, and empowering young minds lies with your dedication and creativity. Stay connected between episodes by following us on Instagram at learnplaythrive underscore and join the conversation on Facebook at LearnPlaythrive Australia. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please like, subscribe, rate, or review our podcast on your favourite platform. Your feedback helps us to continue to deliver content that resonates with you. And don't forget to visit us at our website at learnplaythrive.com.au for additional resources, blog posts, and professional development opportunities. Until next time, keep learning, keep playing, and keep thriving. We'll see you in the next episode of Learn Playthrive the podcast.